Edition No. 021
EDITED BY PATRICE GREANVILLE
Nuggets of clarity, irony, humor and wisdom seen & overheard on the Net
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Dispatch first iteration 0002 2017-10-18= | Collated and edited by Patrice Greanville
MAIN COMMENTERS: • Luciana Bohne • Peter Pavimentov
Peter Pavimentov 6 hrs ago
Napoleon I: In world propaganda terms, he represented the threat of expansion of French revolutionary principles, hence probably victim of the earliest form of "anti-communism," a campaign of defamation initiated by the British, and seconded by the Tsar.
Before the French Revolution the army in France was composed of forced conscriptions for the lower ranks while the aristocracy occupied all senior positions. That is why the regime fell so easily because besides the Swiss guard there was no army to protect and guarantee a status quo for the elites. It was well understood by Napoleon who raised an army on the slogans Liberty, Fraternity and Equality, thus enticing a whole nation into a nationalism that wanted to spread these fine words to the rest of Europe.
That it was full oppression under a dictatorial regime that assumed royal / imperial trappings did not matter, it was the thought that persisted in France of glory and cultural dominance.
A similar situation existed in Russia before 1917 where the army was composed of forced conscriptions and when it suffered a significant defeat against Japan, it crumbled easily when the soldiers saw that they were but cannon fodder and that they served to uphold a corrupt regime under the Czars. That weakness of not having a military back-up forced the establishment into uselessly trying to recoup its power by foreign interference.
When the US army engaged Vietnam, it saw the results of forced conscription and how friable it was when the common soldiers (and even officers) refused to follow orders. The establishment learns fast and it decided that this would not happen again. The conscription was abolished for free enlistment. To encourage enlistment the soldiers were/are promised scholarships and monetary rewards and because they are enlisted from the lower echelons of society the attraction of financial help was/is strong.
In addition, the army, navy and air force are the benefactors of most of the social treasure because each yearly budget increases their emoluments to ever greater heights. The military might of the US not only serves to conquer influence if not territory abroad, but also to guarantee a continuation of concentrated power and wealth for the US elites. They buy their protection by greatly benefiting the military and this is a well-nigh impenetrable policy, enforced by congress. The veneration of military prowess [by the presstitutes] is totally artificial and meant to bolster the status quo. Only when the military ranks defect, that power could be loosened.
One of the advantages to imperialist ideology of substituting the word "culture" for "society" is objectification. It's the difference between a dead and a living organism.
Anthropology, in fact, owes its birth to 19th century imperialism. It was an enabler. A culture was considered as something radically different, timeless, without history, justice, government, or laws. Something left behind. Like a geologic curiosity. A culture was considered static, unchanging, unchangeable, and unchanged. It was. in fact, something like a rock.
A "society," on the other hand was not fossilized in the rock of tradition but the child of history and change. A "society" had to be dynamic to earn its name: it had to evolve, progress, and change; it could not be monolithic. It built institutions and railroads. Its wars were always about good and evil, not orgies of irrational, primitive blood lust. In other words, society was what civilized people had; culture was for the "uncivilized."
Under the influence of American imperialist ideology, the whole West has now become an expert in "cultures"--we talk about "black culture," "Muslim culture," "Chinese culture," "Russian culture." This permits us to treat whole peoples as a homogeneous whole, having no internal conflicts, no dynamics of contradictions, thus, no history.
But what is a people without history? A thing. That can be seized. That can be owned. That can be moved and changed by outside intervention. Moved like an inert rock. Precisely.
Culture, when substituted for society, is dehumanizing. And I'm sick of the babble of it. It's condescending; it's lazy; and in the hands of Western ideologues, lethal.
After the word, come the bombs.
The military might of the US not only serves to conquer influence if not territory abroad, but also to guarantee a continuation of concentrated power and wealth for the US elites. They buy their protection by greatly benefiting the military and this is a well-nigh impenetrable policy, enforced by congress.
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Anthropology like any other human endeavor is indeed a science. But it serves to categorize and dissect customs that societies adapt for survival. The practice of encyclopedic knowledge developed in France under the influence of Descartes and Spinoza, gave rise to the enormous expansion of science and the consequent bondage to technology in the twentieth century. ‘Culture’ was therefore subsumed under primitive customs and seen as antagonistic to science. Rationality and mechanization of every function became the wide norm for judging other less technologically evolved societies, who were thus ripe for conquest and despoliation of their necessary natural resources. The… Read more »